Dronfield Civic Centre Update

The November Council meeting saw Town Councillors unanimously back a motion proposed by Coun Alex Dale and seconded by Coun Angelique Foster, calling on the owners of the Civic Centre retail buildings to release details of their proposals for redevelopment and engage with local residents to ensure they meet Dronfield's needs.

Councillors heard that the owners and their agents had promised that a planning application was 'imminent' for nearly two years but had recently been less communicative.

Commenting, Coun Alex Dale said: "As Leader of the District Council in 2022, I was really proud to be part of the team that secured £500k from the Government's UK Shared Prosperity Funding to public realm improvements in Dronfield Civic Centre. This is money, which has to be spent on regeneration and needed to be used by March, 2025, otherwise we had to give it back. The District Council, under the new administration, is now using this funding on the improvement works which are underway. I know several residents have quite rightly raised concerns about the disruption caused, whether the proposed improvements are value for money and whether the money would be better spent on something else. But the whole idea originally was that the works would be done in conjunction with the redevelopment of the retail buildings and the developers' agents were involved in all of the discussions around the masterplan. "They now need to honour their side of the bargain by engaging with local residents and businesses around how they want to redevelop the area and get a planning application submitted so we can get moving with delivering the Civic Centre that Dronfield deserves!"

The motion specifically invited the Council to write to the owners of the Civic Centre to ask:

*What steps they are taking to attract new and retain existing businesses for the benefit of the people of Dronfield and the surrounding area.

*Whether they will publish their plans for the future redevelopment of the Civic Centre and engage with local people about what they want t see happening and help to ensure the £500k public realm Improvements is not seen as being wasteful.